B3439 - A Consolidator Grant to Study the Developmental Trajectories of Physical and Mental Health Multimorbidity in Genetic High-Risk C - 31/01/2020

B number: 
B3439
Principal applicant name: 
van den Bree | Cardiff University (UK)
Co-applicants: 
Professor John MacLeod, Professor Mark Mon-Williams, Professor David van Heel, Professor Sir Michael Owen, Professor James Walters, Professor George Kirov, Professor Peter Holmans, John Wright, Dr Sarah Finer
Title of project: 
A Consolidator Grant to Study the Developmental Trajectories of Physical and Mental Health Multimorbidity in Genetic High-Risk C
Proposal summary: 

A subgroup of people in the population have a change in their genetic make-up that greatly increases their risk of physical disorder and psychiatric disorder. The medical consequences of these genetic changes are however still very poorly understood. Particularly, we don't really know how these changes lead to increased risk of combinations of physical and mental health problems over time. As presence of a physical or mental health problem increases risk of other ones developing, it is important to understand how and why this happens in this high-risk group. Because these genetic changes are rare, it is important to bring together large samples to study their role in medical outcomes properly. This is particularly important if we want to understand how these changes influence the combined risk of physical and mental health problems in different groups within the population, for example young people versus adults, different ethnic groups and groups from different socio-economic backgrounds. To study these important questions, we propose to work together across four large UK studies in which these genetic changes have been established and which have collected rich information on physical and mental health as well as relevant risk factors. The data sets we will work with differ in the age and ethnic and socio-economic background of the participants. We will be able to follow over time how risk of physical and mental health problems influence each other and how this may be different in these different age. ethnic and socioeconomic groups. The findings will have important implications for developing better interventions for this group, for understanding complex medical risks in the population more generally and for insights into the biology of complex medical risks.

Impact of research: 
The impact will be large, as very little is yet known about the medical implication of pathogenic CNVs in the general population. Our papers have been amongst the first to document this however and have found very high risk of physical and mental health problems as well as mortality. Multimorbidity remains virtually undescribed however. There will be important implications for interventions in this population, for insights that will benefit the general population as well as for understanding the biology of multimorbidity.
Date proposal received: 
Thursday, 9 January, 2020
Date proposal approved: 
Friday, 10 January, 2020
Keywords: 
Genetic epidemiology (including association studies and mendelian randomisation), A range of physical and mental health conditions, Microarrays, CNVs, PRS, physical health, mental health, cognition, risk factors